A typical system for manufacturing sheet-wrapped boards, such as paper-board, chipboard and the like, for example to be used in forming multi-ring binders, usually includes a station at which relatively rigid, precut blanks of chipboard or the like are prewrapped on one side with an oversized first sheet, e.g. paper, plastic and the like, the edges of which are turned over the edges of the board and glued down to margins of the opposite side of the blank. The prewrapped blanks are then typically stored on palettes. A plurality of flexible second sheets, typically made of paper, plastic and the like, are provided, having been previously cut in an appropriate configuration usually slightly smaller than the dimensions of the blank so that each sheet will fit over the unwrapped opposite side of a corresponding blank. One surface of each of these second sheets may have been preprinted with a random or repeat pattern. The opposite surface of each of the second sheets is coated with a tacky adhesive. Subsequently, when needed, the paletted blanks are loaded into the hopper of a laminating or lining machine from which they are individually and sequentially ted to a lining station where corresponding ones of the precut, adhesively-coated second wrappers and prewrapped blanks are registered with one another, and the adhesive-coated surface of the second sheet is placed appropriately on the hitherto unwrapped opposite side of a corresponding prewrapped blank so as to cover the unwrapped portion of that opposite side in the registered relation.
A substantial problem encountered using the above-described technique is that it is necessarily operates with second sheets that are precut and presented from a stack one at a time, so tends to be a fairly slow process. To speed up the application of second sheets, it is known to employ a roll laminator that applies a sequence of boards to an elongated web from a roll to provide a chain of boards connected to the same web, thereafter cutting the web between the boards to separate the latter. Cutting the web between the boards after the boards have been adhered to the web can result in an uneven or ragged edge where the cut is made, so may require an additional trimming step. Additionally in such case, the cut ends of the second sheet usually extend either over or are coincident with the edges of the board and cannot readily be trimmed to provide a margin of interior clearance between that edge of the board and the corresponding edge of the sheet, i.e. back from the edge toward the interior of the board.
Another problem encountered with the prior art approach is that it is quite difficult to properly register the edges of the precut second sheet so as to provide a desired preset margin with respect to the edges of the board.